Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

It wasn’t the best sword on the rack, dull and bronze-looking, ancient and stubby compared with some of the more impressive broadswords around it. She expected the odd voice to resist. But it didn’t argue.

“Sure,” she said. “Take it.”

His face lit with wonder. “Apollo gave me this sword.”

The room had never mentioned that. When he came to the door wanting something, she could have given him this.

But it wouldn’t have killed him, and that was what he wanted.

Then the voice flared, screaming. She screamed to match it and fell, her knees striking the concrete, her hands at her temples.

And she knew that her father was dead. In that moment, she knew everything else as well. Everything she needed.

Alex was at her side, holding her. Heart pounding, she said, “Help me find it. We’ve got to find it. A box. A small box.” She showed dimensions with her hands.

She shoved aside a stack of folded banners and a pile of reptilian scales the size of her hands. She listened to the voice whispering you’re getting close.

“My lady, you’d best hurry,” Merlin called from the next room.

Plank by plank, the ceiling flew away, screeching with the agony of destruction. Spaces of open sky showed through swirling dust and debris. The walls, the roof, were gone. Smelling of brimstone, howling air pulled at her, lifting her. Around her, scraps of cloth and paper, splinters and shrapnel, flew upward. Her ears popped, wind thundering around her. Alex held the waistband of her jeans with one hand and the sword with the other. He anchored her, or she might have flown away as well. Together, they crouched on the floor, protecting each other.

There, shoved far back under a bottom shelf, was a box, small enough to sit on a girl’s lap. It was made of simple wood, bound with bronze hinges. A latch secured the lid.

Stretching, she was able to reach it. She clawed it from its resting place and hugged it to her chest. She still had the sack draped over one arm, but no time to put anything else in it.

“She’s coming!” Arthur cried.

The wind’s ferocity never dimmed, even though Hera had what she wanted. But she wanted Discord and destruction, and she was getting it. Shelves toppled, boxes lifted from their places. The contents of the Storeroom were being sucked into the funnel of a tornado, which seemed to roar with a human voice.

“Now, Merlin! Now!” Evie cried.

“Come on!” Merlin said from the other side of the doorway.

Alex wrapped his arm around her middle and hauled her to her feet. They ran. Merlin pointed at them as they passed through what remained of the doorway.

“Blessings on you both,” he said, a wild look in his eyes, his hair blown in a halo around his face. “We’ll see you on the other side!”

Then the doorway disappeared, showing a rectangle of light instead. They went through it, to searing light and a room with no air. She hoped Alex was holding her, because she couldn’t feel him anymore. She tried to scream, but could not breathe. But she held the box, and the voice that told her what it was, told her that her father had died for it. All he knew, she now knew. And there was no time.

James drove. They’d gotten out just in time. Behind them, the interstate was being closed down, all traffic stopped. Homeland Security had raised the alert status to red, severe. The government expected an attack at any moment. They weren’t even sure from whom. China, India, Russia—did it matter?

Along with six people, the SUV was crammed with supplies like tents, sleeping bags, tools, and bags of groceries: canned food, bottled water, toilet paper. Bruce had known some of his friends occasionally displayed far-out survivalist tendencies—they planned stuff like this for fun during gaming sessions. Now, he was grateful. He wouldn’t have thought of toilet paper.

Callie lay against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, crying silently. Numbly, he held her. The radio blared a static-laden news report on NPR:

“—been an exchange of nuclear armaments on the Asian continent, no word yet on what targets—”

The weather had chosen to reflect the current mood of world politics. Black thunderclouds barred all sunlight; the world was dark. James gripped the steering wheel, struggling to hold the vehicle on its course against a terrible wind. It howled and battered debris against the windows.

“Holy shit! Look at that!” Tony, James’s roommate, pressed his face to the window and craned his neck, looking up. “Do you see it? Do you see it?”

Bruce looked out his own window and tried to see. He had to look almost straight up, as straight up as he could, to directly over the car.

Funnel clouds. A dozen winding, fingerlike swirls of twisting clouds snaked down from the storm, stretching ahead of them to the horizon.

They couldn’t do anything but keep driving. There was no escaping this.

“So where are they, man?” Tony said.

Bruce glared at him. “Who?”

“The Four Horsemen.”

It wasn’t funny.

A flash filled the sky. They all shut their eyes, or turned away to avoid the flare. Lightning. In a storm like this, it had to be lightning.

If a nuclear bomb struck, would they even know it?

The radio cut out with a high-pitched whine.

If the world ended, would anything come after? Would they be able to look back and know what had happened?

Bruce closed his eyes and pressed his face to Callie’s. “I love you.”

A second flash came, white hot, and he never saw the end of it.

Hera entered the Walker house. The game was in motion, the power was in play, but there were a few loose ends left here. She would leave no loose ends.

Part of her entourage flanked her: the Curandera at her right hand, the Wanderer at her left. She still had to see about the girl. She owed it to Frank Walker to make sure she was safe.

Such a prosaic little house to serve as a repository for such great treasures. It was a common trick, hide something beautiful in something plain, disguise the desirable with the humble. It had worked, for a time. Now, though, the house’s roof had blown off, and debris buzzed in a whirlwind around them. The storm was ripping the house apart to its foundations. Hera and her lieutenants moved in a sphere of calm, protected and untroubled.

The Wanderer moved a few steps away. “Look, there,” he said, gesturing Hera closer.

On his side, half his face bloody and caved in, lay Robin Goodfellow. Beardless, boyish, and innocent—even dead, he looked like everything he was not. She’d told him not to attack the house on his own. She’d asked him to wait, and he’d said he would, with that mischievous glint in his eye that indicated he didn’t care if she thought he was lying. He’d always had his own agenda, and she never cared, as long as it didn’t interfere with hers.

It didn’t, even now.

“Come,” she said, and drew the others away from him.

The Storeroom was in the basement. In her space of calm, she went down the stairs, as the world howled around her.

At the base of the stairs, Arthur and Merlin stood guarding the doorway to the Storeroom.

They weren’t guarding much. The ceiling spun up and away, piece by piece, floorboards and wiring ripping and disappearing into the storm, pipes and ducts exposed like bones. Arthur held his sword, the legendary Excalibur, in both hands, and stood with his feet apart and well braced, his blond hair flying around his face. He grinned up at her, maniacal. Beside him, Merlin gazed with chilling calm, standing as if they were in a park on a summer day. He had enough power to be a god. She wouldn’t even have to train him, as she would the others.

What would she have to bribe them with, to bring them to her side?